Not at all. BSA leadership just doesn’t want a lot of bestiality going on in front of the kids at meetings.
I honestly am very tired of hearing anything about the Boy Scouts of America. Am I the only one who grew up in a place where most boys learned basic outdoors stuff on their own or with their dad? The guys I grew up with that were actually outdoors guys (like myself) were hunting and fishing and camping together and with parents/uncles etc and learning a lot more practical outdoors skills than the lame and mostly useless stuff you learn in BSA.
I don’t remember a single boy growing up who thought being a Boy Scout was cool, Boy Scout kids were universally thought of as nerdy losers.
Hey, you skipped a whole generation. Barbra Streisand comes between Judy and Madonna.
DAMN IT! I’m a young gay! Please Don’t take my gay card!!! I’m an avowed homosexuallllllll!!!
Ok, you’re cute so I’ll give you a pass this time. Never forget Barbra again though or the wrath of Barbraphiles will descend on you.
Not everybody lives in the sticks. My father was in the Boy Scouts in the late 1920s, and it was very important for a kid from Brooklyn whose father died at 10.
My understanding is that the reason for this is that they are running out of bigoted companies who will support them. I agree it won’t work - when you have been recruiting bigoted organizations as chartering groups, you are going to have a hard time switching gears.
Yeah. You are one of the few, the judgmental, the insulated idiots.
I was a Girl Scout. All the way through college. Equivalent of an Eagle Scout. (Have a letter from President Carter and everything).
I was exposed to so many things and people that are so far away from friends and family and hunting and fishing that there is no comparison to what you are saying.
And by the way, wtf does “cool” have to do with anything except in your particular worldview?
Boy scouts are all about skills, survival, knowledge, endurance, and survivability.
Boy scouts don’t have sex. There is no sex in any way shape or form on a boy scout outing.
Even growing up in rural Virginia what’s “cool” is very important to young boys, at least in my experience. I’ve got nothing against scouting, I’m just saying where I grew up only a few kids, primarily the ones considered to be on the nerdy side, participated in scouting.
That totally makes sense. It’s logical to wonder what scouting is for since nearly everyone in America lives in a rural area in a moderate climate zone.
…Oh, wait, more than 80% of the American population lives in cities. Huh! It’s almost like most children don’t have ready access to unlimited woodlands and many outdoorsy family members.
Whenever a story like this comes out, it’s important to remember that the BSA is mostly organized at the level of the individual troop. If an individual troop decides that they want a particular person as an adult leader, that person is going to end up being an adult leader, and the council will pretty much just rubber-stamp the decision. The council is generally never even going to find out the orientation of any particular leader. And even if they do, and officially kick that guy out, the troop is likely to just keep on inviting him to events as a “guest”.
Which is not to say that there aren’t also some troops that would shun gays. But it’s not all of them, by any means.
That’s exactly what it means. As a 62 year old, straight, former Eagle Scout who somehow managed to survive exposure to a summer camp counselor who we all knew was gay*, I think this announcement is wrongheaded in the extreme.
- or “queer”, as we so elegantly put it in 1965.
Only 30% live in “high density” cities. I was born in an area considered urban by the census, and part of your 80%–Wytheville, VA has a population of over 2,500 so is considered urban. Urban != you aren’t right in the thick of rural America.
Even some of the top 20 cities in the country population wise many residents are very close to rural life. Have you ever been not just outside cities like Austin but even the edge of the city limits are not very built up, same for cities like Columbus, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Charlotte etc.
Not built up does not mean it is a place where you can camp or even hunt. How much unowned land, not in state parks, do you think is outside Pittsburgh?
A 16 year old still in the scouts might well be a bit nerdy - perhaps. 11 year olds, no. It was a long time ago, but a lot of kids in my elementary school were in the Scouts, and there was a pretty wide distribution.
Wow, that’s more charitable than my interpretation (“by exposing them to normal boys and having them do wholesome outdoor activities, we can teach them the ruggedness they need to learn to be as straight as Walt Whitman.” Yes, I know.)
I never saw the point of scouting anyway, though, so I probably don’t understand how necessary homophobia is to their mission.
Well there is no unowned land in the United States, every parcel of land is owned by something. Have you ever driven south on 79 out of Pittsburgh? You’re in deep rural America very, very quickly. Allegheny County where Pittsburgh is has some weapon restrictions because of the fact a major city is in the county but there is significant hunting activity in Allegheny County every year. If you’re serious about hunting in Pennsylvania you’ll travel to the best areas, which aren’t Allegheny Count, but there is still hunting there for individuals from that area not looking to travel very far.
There are township properties in Allegheny County where you are legally permitted to hunt.
Look whilst I agree with a lot of the hate being pored against the BSA I would say that this is the first step in the process of removing any gay restrictions from the movement. Once some of these kids get to be young adults some will want to become leaders and then and only then will they relax the rules. A lot of major cultural changes have to occour in steps to avoid destroying the movement itself.
So for all the haters keep hating but also acknowledge that this is the first step in the process. Spoken as an Australia Scout Leader, we don’t have the same crap here it is a very different movement [no charters etc]
That’s why the boys are happy to have girls in Scouting in Australia! Makes it challenging as a leader though!!